Homelessness
As a child I recall the pain of homelessness only being present during family outings to major cities. Today, I have witnessed public drug use, open defecation, litter, and unmistakable anguish of untreated mental illness all throughout suburban Minnesota. My heart does not harden at the sight of a fellow human being who has lost their footing. It breaks. The man who does not know where he will sleep tonight, or whether he will eat, that man is still my brother. He is still our responsibility. But compassion without order is not compassion. It is abdication. The behavior that has been allowed to take root in our public spaces is not acceptable. It is not inevitable. It cannot be normalized by those of us who know better. Billions of dollars have been committed in this state to address this crisis. By every honest measure, the problem has grown worse. When a government spends with great enthusiasm and achieves the opposite of its stated aim, that is not misfortune. That is failure. And failure at this scale demands accountability. What I propose is rooted not in punishment but in genuine care. A meal, a bed, four walls, and a roof, paired with real access to rehabilitation and mental health treatment, is a more humane answer than a sidewalk. It is also a more honest one. Our goal is not to warehouse human beings, nor to warehouse the problem out of public sight. Our goal is restoration. Our goal is to identify the roots of these systemic failures, psychological, economic, and institutional alike, and to attack them with the full seriousness they deserve. We The People deserve clean streets. We deserve safe neighborhoods. We deserve cities that reflect the decency of the citizens who built them. And we deserve a government honest enough to look us in the eye and tell us the truth about what is happening in our own backyard. The first step toward solving any problem is the courage to name it accurately. It is past time we found that courage.
(Pics are links)
Official Statewide Homeless Totals